Lures used for catching billfish and other game fish often have a rigid body with one or more permanently attached skirts surrounding the hook. These lures are made and used in a variety of configurations and colors and are provided with skirts of different sizes, configurations, and colors. The skirts are generally fastened to the body, as by wire, glue, tape, or otherwise, to define a one-piece lure, but it is known to provide a threaded connection between the skirt and the body of the lure. See U.S. Pat. No. 4,619,067 issued Oct. 28, 1986 to Robert A. West for FISHING LURE ASSEMBLY.
The disadvantage of the one-piece lures is that each one is "locked in" to its shape, color, weight, size, and the length and color of its skirt. During a typical fishing day, a fisherman may change lures many times, trying to find the lure that is just right for the prevailing light, sea condition, water color, water temperature, and available natural bait. These various conditions change throughout the day, and the fisherman using one-piece lures must have many lures in his tackle drawer, each pre-rigged with a leader and hooks. The rigging and storage of a sufficient variety of lures with their leaders and hooks is troublesome.
The screw-on skirt concept enables the use of a wide variety of skirts with a single lure body, but in order to change the skirt, the skirt must be removed by passing it over both hooks and off the rear of the lure. This requires manipulating the skirts rearward over the bend and barbs of the hooks to remove them, and reversing this cumbersome procedure to put different skirts on the lure. Each such change is time consuming and difficult in rough sea conditions.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,033,063 issued Jul. 5, 1977 to Norman W. Mize for FISH LURE represents the most pertinent patented art known to applicant. Mize shows a fish lure comprising a plug 18 fitted within a tubular body 10 having an axial opening therethrough of substantial diameter through which the loop on the leader of a hook assembly may be freely passed. Beads 22 hold the front 20a of an inner skirt 20 against the rear of plug 18 while the front 16a of an outer skirt 16 is held between the tapered inner surface 26 of the body 10 and the correspondingly tapered outer surface of the plug 18.
It appears the outer skirt 16 of Mize may be removed and replaced by releasing the leader from the snap fastener of a fishing line, not shown, sliding the skirt 16 over the loop at the end of the leader and off of the leader, and then threading a fresh skirt over the loop and on the leader before reconnecting the leader to the snap fastener. Mize's inner skirt 20 is not easily replaceable because the passage through it is too small to freely pass over the loop that is used to connect the leader to the snap fastener.